Add to ORKGInternational audienceThis paper argues that the football trope in literary fiction enables the writer to explore the workings of modernity. In doing so, writers define a place for the reader, which is parallel to the spectator's at a football match. If football may be seen as a form central to our thinking about modernity, the decentering of the analysis brings to light different, splintered, modernities. This study concentrates on English football, as well as on the place of Irish soccer in contemporary Irish culture, or on the writings of the Hungarian novelist Péter Esterházy, who places football at the centre of his writings. This paper concentrates on heroism in football, before turning to an analysis of audiences. Finally, the paper ...